


Get a Little Bit Closer

by Melbell-lings (Melee)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melee/pseuds/Melbell-lings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your first few moments of cognitive thought are when you see Eduard. He’s poking around inside you (though you can’t feel it), his breathing harsh against your sensors.</p><p>"Now, do you know what you are?"</p><p>(AU where Eduard builds a robot)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get a Little Bit Closer

**Author's Note:**

> There aren't as many sources within the fandom from which to draw Ladonia's character. So, fair warning, he might seem quite OC to a potential reader. Also, he's a robot.

Your first few moments of cognitive thought are when you see Eduard. He’s poking around inside you (though you can’t feel it), his breathing harsh against your sensors.

Finally, he pulls back and you see his eyes – the sky, your programming prompts – skimming around, searching you.

“Ah,” he says and fiddles with his spectacles. “Can you… can you hear me?”

Your system whirls for a moment, analyzing and processing. It’s a question, requires a response. “Yes.” Was that enough information? “Auditory processors are functioning.”

“Aha, that’s good.” He runs his fingers over the frames on his face again. “Is everything working properly?”

A quick systems check, and “yes, all operations functioning appropriately.”

He smiles. “Good, good. Now, do you know what you are?”

You search your program for the answer. “I am an independent free-thinking robotic mind. I have access to a wide database of information, including wireless capabilities.” A pause as you search. “You created me.”

Eduard laughs. He sounds… cheerful? “I’m glad.” Yes, happy. “You’re fairly cognitive, but I believe it’ll take a while for you to fully understand normal human things. Like emotions.”

“I am not normal?”

He frowns. “Well, not quite like other humans. I made you, remember?”

This is all quite perplexing. “Humans make other humans do they not?”

Eduard turns, gestures to a table covered in sketches and drawings. You associate the subject of the images with a camera, because nothing else seems to fit. “This is you,” he says softly.

Your motors take over, take you closer. “I made you – I constructed you based on a design of my own making. Here.”

He holds up a mirror, and you see the same camera-like object floating in the glass. The big lens refocuses itself, adjusts and now you can see the mechanics that keep you hovering.

“So what is my purpose?” you ask through the little, but powerful speakers.

Eduard chuckles and you rotate to see him with a hand behind his hand. He coughs.

“I need you to win a bet.”

~~~

“Jesus, Eduard, I can’t believe you actually did it!”

Another young boy bounces up and down. He reaches out for you, but Eduard snatches at his hand.

“Yung Soo, don’t touch,” he scolds.

Eduard already identified his other classmates. Kiku, Naveen and Mathias (who Eduard also had to shoo away) are staring at you. The e-books you have been reading tell you “uncomfortable” is the word for this situation.

Uncomfortable feels like every other time.

“Keep your voices down,” Eduard repeats. “I don’t want a teacher seeing.”

“Eduard, this is… amazing.” Kiku always seems soft spoken. He leans forward. “I can’t believe you made this.”

Eduard is smiling. In the short week you have been operational, reading books and watching TV, you learned your most favourite thing to see is Eduard’s smile. It fits his face oddly, tilted and crooked, so different from the perfect people you see on shows and in comics.

So you do a little twirl to elicit a gasp from the small crowd and watch Eduard’s grin grow.

Naveen quirks her head. “So what’s its name?”

“I…” Eduard’s smile falls. “I don’t know. Ask him, I guess.”

They all turn to you expectantly, and, oh, is this uncomfortable?

You scramble through your programming, flit through the interwebs. “Mary?”

There is silence. Then Mathias says, “Why’d you give it a man’s voice anyway? A chick would’ve been way hotter.”

Eduard and Naveen both smack Mathias. You choose that moment to twitter out a warming before powering down.

Eduard will catch you.

~~~

“Ladonia,” you say sometime later.

Eduard looks up from the computer he’s building. “Huh?”

“I am currently reading about it. Would that be an appropriate name?”

“Sure, I guess.” Eduard carefully rubs his barefeet against the carpet, neutralizing himself. “It’s your choice. Why do you like it?”

“The pictures. I asked if you would like it first.”

He grins. You hover forward. “Maybe. Tell me, where did you find it?”

You skim the Wikipedia article for information you have already been obsessing over for days. “It’s an inlet. A tiny country near Sweden. It has only existed for about thirty years physically, and mostly subsists on the internet. It…” Is this right? “It has sculptures that look like wiring on a computer chip.”

Eduard is quiet, and his face seems like when he is contemplating what to do with all the leftover screws.

“I like that name very much,” he says.

You twirl and land on his desk to watch him work.

~~~

You think Eduard has big hands (but then there are few real-life models for comparison). He moves them slowly, surely, careful of unnecessarily moving wires while you are literally spread out all over his desk. The idea of being taken apart brings up that feeling of uncomfortable in a violent way. You are sure if anyone else tried doing this, you would throw a fit, whirl and shriek.

But Eduard is not just anyone, and this is just as much a sure fact to you as it is that the sun sets and the tides rise.

(Perhaps more so, because you’ve never seen either with your own optics)

“That’s all. I’m going to put you back together now,” he says. After you have been properly re-oriented, he asks, “How’s the weight?”

You drift a little above the desk, then a little more. “All right. I can handle it.”

It is a good answer, because Eduard has that kooky grin again. “I want you to be comfortable.”

You spin round and round in circles, dancing around Eduard and sing “Comfortable, I am comfortable!” and he laughs and spins with you.

~~~

For you, Eduard is an artist, and standing in front of a mirror, testing your new holographic displays proves that. You put in the red, shaggy hair, the ocean-blue eyes; but that is based on images you have searched, not the kind of shear innovation Eduard shows by creating the brush and canvas needed.

You settle on your appearance, and it fits together nicely. Though you’d like some originality. You process images of ancient tribesmen and add a slanted slash of paint across your face that is reminiscent of someone.

When Eduard walks in after school and sees you, you think you might like this new O shape his mouth makes more than his smiles.

“Ladonia.” It sounds like he breathes the word, and he advances. He stares into your holographic eyes, too opaque to see the central processing unit – your brain – and hovers a hand just over the image.

“Do you like it?” you ask and gesture to your hair, your new clothing.

“Yes, I –” he laughs, sits down on the bed, cleans his glasses. He puts them back on, smiles. “It’s amazing. Ladonia, you’re amazing.”

For a moment, you think you have short-circuited. Paintings you have seen of couples, close as can be, flood into your core, when it should have been the other way around.

You move closer and closer, hover your brain higher so you can bend this new body, a knee on one side of Eduard, weight seemingly suspended on arms that cannot push into the mattress.

“Ladonia,” he breathes again, and it is frustrating that you cannot feel the air on fake lips. Instead you tilt until your foreheads are touching. You do not need optics to know the light is distorting where it touches Eduard, causing a halo around his brilliant head.

You probably look like a freak with a hole in the head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t have made you, I didn’t know what I was doing –”

“Hush,” you silence him. “For my next upgrade, build me a body.”

He laughs and you slide your hologram body until he’s sitting in your glow and cradling your core to his chest.


End file.
